Monthly Archives: February 2011

Most people get the notice about updates on their systems and say OK and don’t think about it again. They most likely wont notice the missing 500MB of storage that’s gone. For many power users this is no big problem, but for those people who have Notebooks with smaller drives this could make a difference.

But WAIT – you don’t want to delete these files for a few weeks of use to make sure you don’t have issue with the update. Once you feel that you have used your system without any issue, then you might want to take a look at the following article from HOW-to Geek to remove and restore that storage. At the same time you can remove some other stuff as well!

It’s simple: installing the service pack will take up a bunch of extra space, because Windows is going to create a ton of backups of the pre-service pack files in case you want to roll everything back and uninstall the service pack. This could be anywhere from a few hundred MBs all the way up to a GB or so.

You can easily clean out these backups with Disk Cleanup (see more below), but don’t rush to do that. Keep reading.

I know this has been said before, but maybe this time it will be true. You have two heavy weights – Apple and Intel behind the technology and it just makes so much sense. Remove all your ports on your systems and just have ONE for everything….

Originally this was the goal of USB, but it has failed due to performance and it not really being developed for Video. Very interesting and Apple is the first to market with their new line of notebooks with the standard.

I can see this taking hold very quickly, quicker then what the article below indicates – it’s too bad that they missed the current INTEL processor change-up as this technology might have been included in that refresh of systems from other major players like HP – DELL and Lenovo. I think the next round of processor updates you will see both the Thunderbolt and USB on new systems and sometime next year USB will be removed from the picture completely.

In its initial out-of-the-lab incarnation, Thunderbolt can use either copper or fiber connections for 10Gbps bidirectional communication. That speed is 20 times faster than the theoretical limit of USB 2.0, 12 times faster than FireWire 800, and twice as fast as USB3. According to Intel, however, the 10Gbps isn’t just a theoretical peak speed, but usable bandwidth. This allows a single port to communicate with multiple devices simultaneously for a combined throughput of 10Gbps.

That 10Gbps is much faster than most current I/O technologies. With two devices pushing data at the maximum rate, you could back up a full Blu-ray movie in 30 seconds, or sync 64GB of music to a portable device in about a minute. Copying the entire contents of the Library of Congress in digital form—approximately 20TB of data—would take about 35 minutes.

Active electrical-only cables can be up to 3 meters (just under 10 feet) in length, similar to current FireWire and USB standards. Active optical cables, which use fiber for data transmission and copper for up to 10W of power, can be “tens of meters” in length. Passive fiber-only cables could potentially be hundreds of meters long. These lengths enable more flexible positioning between devices and computers instead of relying on specialized connections or relatively pokey wireless solutions.

I have talked about Evernote in the past and a few others web options that I have tried…. These are all more than just Notebooks, it’s a filing systems and can become your 2nd memory. Take a picture of anything with your phone, send it to Evernote – TAG it and you have a new record. I am back using Evernote full-time it has become a very important productivity tool for my day-to-day work. The reason it has moved up in importance is that I was able to install the Windows application on my system and it brought many additional tools that allowed me to be more productive.

I believe anyone using a computer can use this great tool – this is really a great tool for Teachers – the following Blog post on Evernote blog details just a few ways one of your peers is using Evernote to make his job easier.

Well…. Microsoft released Service Pack 1 today… For those that have been keeping up to date and using the automatic update feature of Windows 7 – there should be very little to update. The good thing about this is that if you use the Automatic update, the Service pack will only update the items that you have not installed over the last year.

Similar to other Service Packs – there are very few items that are new, no real new features but a few bug fixes. The nice thing about this for those that install WIN7 often, or like to do clean installs – this will make the hundreds of updates a lot quicker.

You can just go to Windows update and tell it to update or you can go to the Windows update web page to download it yourself.

Hackers getting into your email account and causing problems have been in the news a lot lately, I have not been invected, but I know of others that have. Recently Microsoft put into place many ways of keeping your account free from hackers and if you are not using them, you should be.

Windows LIVE BLOG has a great article detailing the different methods as well as a new Wizard to help you get your account back if it has been hacked.

Like this:

If your running Vista or Windows 7 you’re going to want to update your IE 8 to IE 9 and enjoy a LIGHTER – FASTER and a Cleaner experience. Microsoft is saying they are ahead of the rest of the pack with this new release…..

By now you’ve likely heard about the announcement of our partnership with Nokia. I’m incredibly excited about its long-term potential and how it could enable us to innovate, differentiate, and combine strengths to build a new global ecosystem that creates opportunities beyond anything that currently exists today. We’re creating an entirely new ecosystem of possibilities for developers. For our part, Microsoft is first and foremost a platform company which means that nearly everything we do begins and ends with the developer community in mind. This deal is no exception. I want to share with you what I think this alliance means for Windows Phone developers.

In simplest terms, this alliance can dramatically increase the customer base for Windows Phones, and, by extension, your apps and games. This equates to both a larger and more localized consumer market for apps and games on handsets, as well as an acceleration of innovation in back-end services and core infrastructure. For example, Nokia already has strong relationships with operators in more than 190 markets. Nokia also manages an application marketplace that delivers 4 million downloads per day; a channel that will complement the existing Windows Phone Marketplace experience to bring Windows Phone developers and Nokia customers together. We will have more details to share about the marketplace strategy in the future, but our intent is to build upon the best of what both companies offer today.

Two huge companies are getting into bed together to go against the NEW leaders in the smart phone arena. If these two very large companies do it right, I would think that both Apple and Google are going to have a fight on their hands… but will they – Can they? To this point neither have shown themselves to be quick to market – Reason for them joining together!

The other questions is how long before we see product, Iphone 5 is coming, new Android O/S coming – things are changing quickly and can these players get into the game in time? Microsoft already took too long to get into the mix, though they did bring a great product to market – one that people should be looking at as an alternative.